Marriages, so far from being entered upon with greater recklessness, would then be more cautiously undertaken, because their durability would depend on mutual satisfaction. The woman would have full equality of rights, and not be a miserable sacrifice to unjust laws, as now she often is. It would be a step toward the ideal of the marriage state, which is a union based on love, in which each party has absolutely equal rights and stands pledged to equal duties, and neither is bound to the other longer than love and duty are respected. Neither government nor religion should put obstacles in the way of the dissolution of marriage other than those safeguards of the interests involved, which attend the termination of all important contracts. Deep thinkers on the relations of life in goodly number have long advocated these views. They have been those of John Milton, of William von Humboldt, of John Stuart Mill. Nor is there anything in them which an enlightened moral or religious sentiment should oppose; rather the contrary. As Milton so well says in his Treatise on Divorce,――“Where Love cannot be, there can be left of wedlock nothing but the empty husk of an outside matrimony, as undelightful and unpleasing to God as any other kind of hypocrisy.” The object of marriage is the Family. Love claims immortality through posterity. The hidden though ever-present purpose of the union of the sexes is the perpetuation and evolution of the species. Any union which avoids this object is destructive, and not creative of true happiness. We are told of the ancient ascetic sect of the Essenes that the sexes united in marriage, but remained chaste; and had families of children, but gathered them from among the foundlings and homeless orphans of the highways. Their impossible example does not merit the praise, as it has not enlisted the imitation of, later generations. The maternal and paternal affections, the love of family and the pleasures derived from the ties of kindred, are enjoyments which the properly constituted individual will never be willing to sacrifice unless constrained thereto by mighty and exceptional conditions. The tacit assumption of mutual aid and confidence between brothers and sisters, and the intimacy which is fostered by even remoter degrees of relationship, are beneficent elements of the social compact, and contribute largely to the happiness of the individual. The Family, as we understand it, is distinctly a product of high civilization. In savage tribes the ties of consanguinity are quite different. In many, for instance, the father is scarcely regarded as a relation, blood kin being counted through the mother only. The rise of the paternal or patriarchial form of the family appears at a higher stage of culture; and when, as among the Etruscans and Romans, it was coincident with a recognized equality in marriage, society advanced with rapid strides.